PURPOSE: Cancer patients frequently suffer from multiple symptoms often impairing functional status and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). A comprehensive assessment including patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is recommended to enable individualized supportive care. However, PRO assessments are still not part of routine clinical practice. Therefore, this project aimed to compile an item pool from validated assessment instruments to facilitate the use of PROs for clinical decision-making in oncology clinics...

BACKGROUND: The goal was to determine whether one medical centres' unique antifungal prophylactic regimen for patients at high risk for invasive candidiasis because of their haematological malignancies, haematopoietic stem cell transplants, or high-dose chemotherapy might lead ultimately to a higher incidence of infection, to increasing fluconazole resistance, or to a shift in the predominant strain of Candida in invasive fungal episodes. METHODS: Data were collected retrospectively, for a ten-year period from ONKO-KISS surveillance records, and from hospital, medical, and pharmacy records and then evaluated with respect to incidence of fungal infection episodes, emergence of antifungal drug resistance, and predominance of specific Candida strains in isolate cultures...

BACKGROUND: Continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) measure glucose in real time, making it possible to improve glycemic control. A promising technique involves glucose sensors implanted in subcutaneous tissue measuring glucose concentration in interstitial fluid. A major drawback of this technique is sensor bioinstability, which can lead to unpredictable drift and reproducibility. The bioinstability is partly due to sensor design but is also affected by naturally occurring subcutaneous inflammations...

Surface properties of lens cases are determinant for their cleanability and for microbial transmission from lens cases to contact lenses (CLs). PEG-polymer-brush-coatings are known to decrease microbial adhesion more than other surface-coatings. Here, we applied a robust, silica nanoparticles-based brush-coating to polypropylene cases to evaluate their ease of cleaning and probability of bacterial transmission to CLs. Adhesion forces of nine bacterial strains (Pseudomonas, Staphylococci, and Serratia) to rigid CLs, polypropylene, and silica nanoparticles-based brush-coated polypropylene were measured using atomic-force-microscopy and subjected to Weibull analyses to yield bacterial transmission probabilities...

Competing risks model time-to-first-event and the event type. Our motivating data example is the ONKO-KISS study on the occurrence of infections in neutropenic patients after stem-cell transplantation with first-event-types 'infection' and 'end of neutropenia'. The standard approach to study the effects of covariates in competing risks is to assume each event-specific hazard (ESH) to follow a proportional hazards model. However, a summarizing probability interpretation of the different event-specific effects of one covariate can be challenging...

The purpose of this study was to analyse risk factors for blood stream infection (BSI) and pneumonia in neutropenic patients who have undergone peripheral blood stem-cell transplantation (PBSCT). Data were taken from the ONKO-KISS multicenter surveillance project. Infections were identified using CDC definitions (laboratory-confirmed BSI) and modified criteria for pneumonia in neutropenic patients. The multivariate analysis was performed using the Fine-Gray regression model for the cumulative incidences of the competing events 'infection', 'death' and 'end of neutropenia'...

UNLABELLED: Increased 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) concentration has been proposed as reliable marker of the oxidative DNA damage, and prognostication of urological carcinogenesis, particularly in bladder cancer. Widely accepted method of treatment in early stages of bladder cancer is transurethral electro resection (TURN). Intravesical bacillus Calmette-Guerin instillation is considered to be the therapeutic agent for superficial transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) of the bladder and has been established as standard therapy in the patients...

BACKGROUND: For surveillance of nosocomial bloodstream infections (BSIs) and pneumonia during neutropenia in adult patients who have undergone bone marrow transplantation (BMT) or peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT), a multicenter study--the Hospital Infection Surveillance System for Patients with Hematologic/Oncologic Malignancies (ONKO-KISS)--was initiated in Germany in 2000. METHODS: Nosocomial infections were identified in neutropenic patients by means of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention definitions for laboratory-confirmed BSI and modified criteria for pneumonia...

Positron emission tomography (PET) is the most powerful molecular imaging technique currently available for clinical use. Because deranged tumour metabolism is a common finding in many malignancies, PET is frequently used for tissue characterisation, staging and therapy control. Four previous consensus studies in Germany, performed up to 1997, have established indications for fluorine-18 fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) PET in oncology, neurology and cardiology. More than 10,000 references on FDG-PET have been published in the meantime, mostly on oncological issues...

BACKGROUND: : To analyse current literature on FDG-PET for evaluation of lung lesions, N-staging, M-staging, and recurrence of lung cancer for the third German Consensus Conference on PET in oncology. METHODS: Specialists in nuclear medicine, pneumology, radiation oncology, diagnostic radiology, and thoracic surgery reviewed the relevant literature as listed in MEDLINE from 1985 to 1999 for further analysis. Out of the published data cumulative test parameters and summary receiver operating characteristic curves (sROC curves) were computed...

In vulvar cancers HPV 16 positive, HPV 16 negative, and vulvar and vaginal precancerous status (VIN, VAIN) immunohistochemical technik onko- and antioncogenic proteins were evaluated. The contrary correlation between HPV 16 presence and overexpression p53 were detected. It suggest the heterogenic etiology of these cancers. There was payed attention to high activity of virus replication and intensive virion production in VAIN. Nontreated vaginal lesion may make difficult to obtain a positive cervical HPV infection treatment...

The historical development of the cell death concept is reviewed, with special attention to the origin of the terms necrosis, coagulation necrosis, autolysis, physiological cell death, programmed cell death, chromatolysis (the first name of apoptosis in 1914), karyorhexis, karyolysis, and cell suicide, of which there are three forms: by lysosomes, by free radicals, and by a genetic mechanism (apoptosis). Some of the typical features of apoptosis are discussed, such as budding (as opposed to blebbing and zeiosis) and the inflammatory response...

Now that we know about the genetic production mechanisms of diseases of the trophoblast, interest is concentrated on the question which risk factors can produce a disposition in the patient - seen from a clinico-genetic angle - towards malignancy of a complete mole. Many years before the genetic interrelations became known, there had been discussions on blood relationship as a possible aetiological factor in the production of chorionic carcinoma. Since consanguinity in preceding generations can lead to a selection of certain genotypes, this question was reexamined on a limited patients material (10 patients with chorionic carcinoma and 11 with mole)...